Thanks Susan...I understand the sentiment. I feel like we are in a building year also...though I'm willing to be surprised!

I'm going by myself this year, am planning on taking K-bug next year, and then hopefully CJ the year after. I told him he had to be at least 10 cause I like to get to the ballparks early and stay until I get kicked out - makes for a long day, but lots of autographs and fun.

Has anyone ever read The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel? I've read the first couple of chapters and have found it....really unconvincing. It just seems to be all throwing softball questions to christian scholars. I peeked ahead at a section titled "The Rebuttal Evidence" to see if there was some real content and it was sort of .... there is this group who questions a lot of stuff and here is a critic of theirs to talk about them.... Ugh. The problem is that my wife is hoping that I will get a lot out of this book, and I hate to tell her that it's just not happening.

Vanderbuilt (sp?)

Vanderbilt.

I grew up too far south for Appalachia, but my part of Alabama has more affinities with that culture than with the moonlight-and-magnolias version of the South. Well, it did until it all got overran by Birmingham's New South boom over the past 20-30 years. So from my limited experience, I'd say it's a gritty culture, but cheerfully so, with a certain fascination with the macabre. And it was always amusing to reflect on all the stories Dad had told me about how Brother Howard, the local Baptist pastor, was the son of a big-time moonshiner from Prohibition days.

vw, I wishwishwishwish I could get you a picture of my great-uncle Joe. My dad has this huge portrait of him hanging in their living room. He served in WWI, came back to Kentucky and ended up getting shot while riding his mule through a hollow in 1957. The official story is that he was involved in a "land dispute". Mom says he was killed by a jealous husband. I have so many stories from my Dad and Grandpa. I would LOVE to sit in on that class with you.

Oh, and Happy Birthday, Lexine!!!

Has anyone ever read The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel?

I read something like that once... maybe the same book? about 18 years ago or so. The one thing I remember was the the author telling the reader to contemplate the following two phrases:

Jesus is nowhere.

Jesus is now here.

I guess that was supposed to illuminate the paradox of the "Where is God?" question. I just wanted to say to the author, "Dude, that's an accident of spelling...."

Has anyone ever read The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel?

My mother adores it and gave me a copy, but I never read it and eventually got rid of it. Which I know doesn't help you much. I got the impression it was something along the lines of Evidence That Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowell, which all the Campus Crusade kids read in college. (In InterVarsity we spent more time reading Passion and Purity so we could bring our love lives under Christ's control. I kinda wish I'd saved my heavily highlighted copy just for a record of who I used to be.)

t liberalish Christian Anyway. I'm of two minds about the whole "let's prove Christianity!" genre. (Which AFAIK does *not* yet have its own section at B&N, but give it time....) I wouldn't be a Christian if I didn't believe the major events of the Bible, particularly Jesus' resurrection, actually happened. But OTOH, I think intellectual persuasion has its limits, especially since the authors tend to stack the deck. I feel like faith has to leave room for mystery and doubt, too. t /liberalish Christian

happy birthday Lexine!

vw, are you reading any Fred Chappell in your class? He was one of my grad school teachers. His version of Appalachia is not quite so bleak as the one in the scary book.

Evidence That Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowell, which all the Campus Crusade kids read in college.

That is what I was thinking of.

In college, I was a member of some campus atheist group - we used to debate the Campus Crusade kids, which is how the book got into my hands.

vw, I read a review of the book you're reading, and the last section is supposed to be quite funny in a satirical way. Of course, one person's satire is another one's gut-wrenching horror. The whole book is supposed to be funnier than not.